That connection just got a little stronger with the hiring of new executive chef Jerome Fressinier, who was born and raised in the French village of Saintes in the Poitou-Charentes region in southwest France.

“The Poitou region is where many of the French immigrants are from that settled in Canada and then went down south,” including Louisiana, says Fressinier, who took over at Picán two months ago. “There are strong French roots to southern cooking so it seemed like a natural fit.”

Fressinier has trained under Michelin-starred chefs Hubert Keller and Marc Veyrat, and worked as executive chef at restaurants from Florida to Arizona to Carmel-by-the-Sea. Most recently, he was working at La Boulange, helping with the Bay Area bakery’s transition after being taken over by Starbucks. (“That was kind of a monster,” he admits.) He becomes Picán’s third chef in less than a year following the departure last fall of Sophina Uong, now heading the kitchen at Berkeley’s Revival Kitchen, and a six-month stint by Robert Sapirman, who returned to the corporate restaurant world.

At Picán, Fressinier will look to explore Southern cooking’s early origins. The cuisine, he says, has always had a strong tradition of using native local ingredients. To that end, Picán was already sourcing from several local farms, something Fressinier plans to continue and highlight.

“People who go to the local farmers markets will see on our menu what they see seasonally,” he says. “And they will also see some plants that they may be seeing for the first time and will have to ask the server to explain what it is.”

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that Picán’s food is in for a total overhaul. Most of the southern comfort favorites—fried chicken, shrimp and grits, pork ribs—will remain, just with more local ingredients as accompaniment. Look for changes after the July 4 holiday, when Fressinier says he’ll turn over about a quarter of the menu. He also has big plans for Picán’s dessert program, details of which he says will be revealed soon.